KNOXVILLE (WATE) - John Reece Roth, a former electrical engineering professor at the University of Tennessee, began serving his sentence on January 18 for sharing military research data with China.
Roth is serving a four-year prison sentence for his convictions in September 2008. He had been on bond pending his appeals, but those were all unsuccessful.
The Department of Justice says Roth turned himself in at the federal correctional facility in Ashland, Kentucky.
Roth was convicted after a trial in federal court in Knoxville of conspiracy, wire fraud and 15 counts of exporting "defense articles and services" without a license.
The professor obtained an U.S. Air Force contract to develop plasma actuators to control the flight of small, subsonic, unmanned, military drone aircraft.
However, Roth allowed two foreign national students to access controlled data and equipment, and export some of it on a trip to China.
The case was a first-of-its-kind prosecution of a university professor for the transfer of controlled defense technology to foreign national graduate students.
